As the use of ride-hailing apps and automated cars expands, more builders and real estate investors are questioning if garages are a necessity.

About one in three Americans — or 35 percent of the 1,028 adults surveyed — use ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, according to data from the Toluna Research Group. And by 2025, about 8 million automated vehicles will be traversing U.S. roads without a human at the helm, according to ABI Research estimates.

Such data — paired with trends showing that more people are nixing their cars altogether — begs the question: Just how important is that garage?

The answer, according to a recent survey, is that the garage is not only still essential to most homebuyers, but that the percentage of new homes built without garages is in decline.
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